Tendulkar's second
innings inconsistency

On Tuesday evening, as India put on a routinely pathetic batting performance, Harsha Bhogle and co. were taking calls from all over the world to answer queries from cricket fans. To answer the queries were experts Ravi Shastri and Navjot Singh Sidhu besides Bhogle himself. One caller asked about Sachin Tendulkar’s tendency to score inconsistently in the second innings of Test matches. Quite obviously, the caller was referring to the perceived inability of Tendulkar to score as prolifically in the second innings as in the first. The responses, all extra-ordinary and interesting, went as follows:

Harsha Bhogle: With a batting average of 62 runs per innings at home and 56 runs away, that is probably a harsh thing to say.

Sidhu: Sachin has almost 60 centuries in international cricket.

Shastri: This comment comes from a bloke who doesn't follow cricket.

Even if one looks slightly close at the responses, one can conclude that all of them are irrelevant. No one was questioning his value as a batsman or his position as the leading world batsman. The question was precise but the answers weren’t.

Shastri's response, however, went one step further: it was plain impolite and rude, which is quite uncharacteristic, coming from the man who has become the hallmark of conduct and professionalism in cricket commentary.

Why was everyone bending backwards to ward off even the smallest criticism of Tendulkar? The caller didn’t seem to question Tendulkar’s greatness. He was simply asking if the man performed less prolifically in the second innings as compared to the first. It was a critique of one aspect of his performance.

It gets a little embarrassing when so many of us tend to be protective about Tendulkar. It’s even ironic, since he is one man who can do well without additional protection from Shastri or anyone else for that matter. There is no doubt that Tendulkar is the best batsman in the world today and might well retire as the best ever, next to Bradman. But that doesn’t, in any way, mean that he is above criticism or discussion.

Shastri’s comment left a bad taste in the mouth. Why should he have publicly rebuked the caller, questioning his knowledge of cricket etc? Even if Shastri was right, and the caller’s comment was indeed stemming from ignorance, there were polite ways of tackling that question. But, the basic point is, was Shastri even right?

While the ugliness of the comment was still fresh in my mind, the caller’s question began to look intuitively interesting. Yes, there seems in recent memory several occasions when Tendulkar has not performed as well in India's second innings. So, I sought help of his statistics and the following is the analysis of the same.

Tendulkar averages 63.55 runs while playing in the first innings, while managing only 46.6 runs while playing in the second. A compelling difference indeed. He scores 27 per cent fewer runs in the second innings as compared to the first. But then, maybe, averages are a misleading statistic. Let us now look at the number of scores that Tendulkar has made above 50 runs while playing in the first and second innings.

Sachin Tendulkar

Innings	# of innings	# of scores above 50	% of innings with score above 50
First	83	39	47%
Second	54	15	28%

Here again, it is evident that Tendulkar’s scores are far higher in the first innings than in the second. The likelihood of him scoring more than 50 runs in the second innings is almost half than that of him scoring 50 runs in the first. Again, a very significant difference!

It is safe to conclude, therefore, that Tendulkar’s performances in the second innings have been inferior to his OWN performances in the first. This is an internal comparison and does not de-merit him as a player. It is an aspect of his game that is being analyzed.

So, it turns out, the caller was right! He did have a point. I wish he reads this, not because someone is endorsing his comment or question, but because he actually had a valid point. And sadly, it is Shastri who should be described as "an arrogant bloke who doesn’t follow cricket". He should be careful in making impolite statements in public (and he normally is), and doubly careful if he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

As an aside, it was interesting to see how other great players compared, internal to themselves, regarding this issue. Viv Richards is the one batsman that Tendulkar is most often compared with. How does he perform in the two innings? Well, he averages 50.8 runs in the first innings and 48.9 runs in the second. A very marginal difference indeed. Again, just to ensure that averages are not leading to wrong conclusions, let us look at scores above 50.

Viv Richards

Innings	# of innings	# of scores above 50	% of innings with score above 50
First	121	48	40%
Second	61	21	35%

The conclusion is similar. The difference between his performances is not significant.

One then wonders why it is so in the case of Tendulkar. But that is for another day.

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Mail Subodh S. Chitre